Drug Addiction Recovery

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It is never easy to handle the fact that a family member may have an addiction that could be tearing the family apart not to mention harming the physical well-being of the person with the addiction. When creating its drug and rehabilitation programs, the Narconon Fresh Start program has been guided by the objective to help participants recover and assist in healing families for a happier life for all involved. There are a number of ways to cope:

Seek advice from counselors or therapists: It can be emotionally draining to deal with a family member’s addiction and it can leave you upset, angry, and confused. You may not know what to say or how to handle it let alone deal with your own feelings, which could run the gamut from guilt to anger. Going to see a counselor or therapist and getting their advice can help you to cope and handle the situation appropriately so you do not hurt your family member and make the situation worse.

Emotionally support your family member: Do not desert your family member in their time of crisis. Whether they have admitted they have an addiction or not, give them love and be there when they need you even they do not show you that love in return. Like the Narconon Fresh Start philosophy maintains, it is important to remember that they are not themselves when addicted to drugs or alcohol and that the lovable person is still lurking inside somewhere.

Have an intervention: Show some tough love by staging an intervention where you gather friends and family together with the addict and tell them how you all feel and encourage them to seek professional help. These kind of tactics do often backfire so be prepared for the intervention to be challenging. Often, these are best done right before taking them directly to a rehabilitation center.

Support a rehabilitation visit: Whether that means financial support or emotional support, a family member who chooses to seek rehabilitation should be encouraged for their efforts. It is important to give them the space to deal with the issues that have led them to addiction. That’s why some centers like the Narconon Fresh Start program ask that family members not contact loved ones in treatment during the first few weeks. This starts the healing process for both the addict and you.

You’ve probably heard it before—the mainstream definition of addiction as a disease. This is the basis of almost all drug rehabilitation and addiction treatment programs. The idea is that people are born prone to addiction and all it takes to set this “disease” in motion is to consume alcohol or take drugs.

Once that happens, the addict is no longer in control of him- or herself—the disease is.

But at Narconon Fresh Start Drug Rehab, we don’t believe that addiction is a disease. Instead, we view it as a problem—one that can be solved.

More specifically, we view drug use and drug addiction as symptoms of underlying, unaddressed problems.

No one starts out wanting to be a drug addict or an alcoholic. But what starts out as recreational use too often turns into dependence. Our clients tell us that they “just wanted to feel differently,” or that getting high or drunk enabled them to temporarily “forget about problems.” That is, until the drug use or drinking becomes a bigger problem than the one they were trying to avoid.

From a physical standpoint, the body becomes accustomed to having the substance in the system. Moreover, with time, your body actually stores residual amounts of these substances in the fatty tissue. Over time, that fat gets burned and the residual substances are again released into the bloodstream, resulting in cravings.

The Narconon Fresh Start program helps our clients completely detoxify their bodies—eliminating all residual drugs and alcohol—to enable them to continue with the program without being plagued by intense physical cravings.

Once the detox process is completed, we then help our Narconon Fresh Start clients learn how to deal with the situations that caused them to want to use drugs or alcohol to begin with. With new life skills comes a new outlook, and a new perspective on how to live life without resorting to drugs and alcohol.

If you’re an addict or alcoholic looking for real sobriety, come see us at Narconon Fresh Start.